I own these socks (but not the tennis shoes -- although I did have a pair of those sweet Converse back in the day) . . .

"I figure it is probably, maybe the only way I'm going to get to heaven. So I better do a good job." - Trump on winning the Presidency. I've just been thrown into Theological Confusion and an Ethical Dilemma.

I just discovered that Decatur will play a regular season high school football game in the new indoor practice facility of the Cowboys in Frisco. That's cool.

Hell or High Water looks good. But it looks like No Country for Old Men. If I hear a trailer that mentions Midland, Odessa, or Abilene I suddenly get interested.

"I get banned for not liking Bush and now Trump can practically put a hit out on Hillary and he's still all over country radio! Hypocrites!" - Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks.

It's August and still no trials in the Waco Twin Peaks' biker cases and the Montague County DA has still not released records to the Messenger regarding the shooting of the Wise County drug dog.

I'm not sure the last time I remember multiple days of rain projected in August.

A three year old boy was injured when he fell from a roller coaster in Pennsylvania. What's the world coming to when a three year old can't ride a roller coaster?

The NFL won't let Dallas players wear a decal supporting Dallas police in the regular season. This is the way it has always been: If the NFL can't make money off of something, they ban it. (Case in point: Get your official NFL pink breast cancer gear right here.)

Oldest player in NFL: Kicker Adam Vinatieri at age 43. To put that in perspective: Bill Clinton was in his first term when Vinatieri entered the league.

There was a high speed chase that dominated the local news yesterday afternoon. How did it end? He stopped. Obeyed orders to get on the ground. And the cops simply walked over to him and handcuffed him. Simple as that.

With the approval of a $175,000 legal bill yesterday, the City of Dallas has now spent $400,000 and climbing on fighting the Exxxotica Convention.

Airing up a tire is tense. (I think that goes back to a 60 Minutes episode decades ago where there was a story on truck tires and defective rims. They would explode sometimes while being aired up.)

A taxpayer funded investigation (which must be labeled a "sting") in El Paso by the FBI and "the [state] Office of Inspector General - TDCJ and other law enforcement agencies" nets the arrest of six people who worked for taxpayers for allegedly -- wait for it -- falsifying records. The case will now go forward to those paid by the taxpayer who work in incarceration, prosecution, and the courts. The economic impact will be greater than the criminal justice impact.

The Rangers have a day game today with the start time at 1:05. That may be the closest that game time and the temperature are equal to each other in Ranger history.

The Alvord Watermelon Festival has a theme for its beauty pageant. Do we have a Bum Steer candidate? . . .

Eighteen year old Malia Obama was seen allegedly smoking weed in Chicago where it is legal? Oh, the horror! (The boys on WBAP thought the Secret Service should be held "responsible" for "contributing to the delinquency of a minor." Seriously.)

I feel sorry for the husbands having to listen to them. Can you imagine that chatter? . . .

This may be the first presidential election in history where the goal of the candidate is to keep the focus on the other candidate.

I didn't watch any of The Bachelorette but Mrs. LL might have received her doctorate in What-Will-JoJo-Do. JoJo and her new mate will live in sina 1,547 square foot home on the M Streets in Dallas.

New Time magazine cover . . .

By the way, Trump called the President the "founder of ISIS" yesterday.

Dallas County Commissioners gave themselves a raise to $157,111. I've said it for years: Somewhere along the way government jobs became better gigs than private sector jobs.

The Air Force has a pilot shortage? Easy solution: Just remake and release Top Gun on Snapchat.

The AP released its Texas high school football polls yesterday. No Wise County school made any divisional Top 10. In fact, no Wise County school received a single vote.

If you show up for jury duty in Dallas County, do you know who you'll see in the instructional video? Fox 4's Clarice Tinsley. Can you imagine the life force being drained from the general jury room when that video begins to roll?

"Am I here to help you? Yes! Just label me . . . 'Guilty'!"

A random post on the official and public Texas prosecutor message board probably is a great way to screen out potential applicants. Bad mouth my office in public and then ask for a job? Riiiiiiight. (Not to mention that any prosecutor opening gets a million applicants these days. You aren't exactly in a position of power if you are a lawyer looking for a job these days.)

Any one can allege anything in a lawsuit, but a prominent professional calf roper from Decatur makes the front page of the Star-Telegram today.

I've seen it with my own eyes on Lake Bridgeport: There is a technique where you can actually surf behind a slow moving boat sans a rope. (I posted a video a few weeks back with a couple of kids doing that trick with a dog sitting on the surfboard.)

The diving pool turning from blue to green in Rio is weird. It looks like the water at Six Flags on the old cave ride.

Six Flags creeping a kid out back in the day

Compare and Contrast in Rio

The Tarrant County case of Ed McIver Jr. is a perfect example of the State jacking with someone. A grand jury declined to indict him earlier this year on attempted capital murder of an officer charges. (If you can't get a grand jury indictment, a prosecutor should thank his lucky stars because he has been saved from an eventual acquittal by a jury on an incredibly worthless case.) Despite the no-bill, prosecutors fought to keep the guy in jail. A judge reduced his bail and he got out. The State then threw him back in jail for alleged "violations" of his bond conditions. Yesterday, the Tarrant County DA's office again tried to have him indicted on attempted capital murder by simply going to a different grand jury. Once again, the DA's office was told it was out of its collective mind.

I don't know if Art Briles, who for some strange reason was at Cowboys training camp yesterday, will ever coach again at the major college level. Probably not.

I'm frustrated that I didn't take up kayaking on the U.S.S. Liberally Lean until after Olympic qualifying. Everyone would be talking about my gold medal this morning instead of Michael Phelps.

John Oliver's show this week spent the majority of its time focusing on the importance of newspapers and the dismissal state they are in. They are so desperate they've stumbled by trying to incorporate social media into their content. (I noticed the Dallas Morning News' new beta site is dumping a couple of Facebook comments directly into the body of a story without comment or acknowledgement. You just suddenly see a couple of embedded comments from spare strangers.)

In that same vein, the Star-Telegram's Bud Kennedy took Judge Larry Myers to task for posting the fake "no parking" signs in his neighborhood. When I looked at it, there were three comments using Facebook logins at the end of it (with one of them being someone shoehorning in their own unpaid ad.) And the first comment had the following insight: "What do you expect from a LIBERAL judge, laws aren't for them don't you know! They are experts at breaking the law, just look at their mullah ovomit, now isn't he something special? Go Trump!" Yep, newspapers really need that social media contribution.

I bet there will come a day when high school volleyball no longer uses the term "kills".

Courthouse discussion yesterday: Name the country artist who shot a music video in Decatur, what movie was it from, and what year?

Trump didn't actually threaten Hillary yesterday. The trouble is that Trump supporters have to constantly jump back and forth between, "I support Trump because he's a straight shooter who means what he says" and "Oh, well, he didn't mean that."

The BagOfNothing guy had an epiphany yesterday when he realized the joy of anticipation. Being the hardest working man in show business, I wrote about that eight years ago when I referenced this clip:

"If [Susan Hawk] is the county's top attorney, that office works at peak efficiency when she's gone." - The Ticket's Gordon Keith on the oft-absent Dallas DA.

A horrible wreck in Decatur this morning left many injured and one dead. Apparently it happened when a car ran the stop sign at Deer Park Road and Business 380. My mind goes to the Butterfly Effect and what millions of sequences of previous events had to be perfectly timed to cause those two cars to be at that specific spot at that moment in time.

Amazing: Larry Myers, a judge on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, "has acknowledged that he helped install eight fake 'No Parking' signs on a city street near Texas Christian University" because of traffic headaches.

"Over 2-day span, 3 bodies pulled from the Trinity River in Fort Worth." I don't know if tubing at Panther Island is still ongoing.

They have branches now?

There's something weird about this case: "Danita Tutt, 40, is accused of causing serious bodily injury to her son, Colby, by lying about his medical history to the boy’s doctors, prompting the boy to undergo unnecessary surgeries and be placed on unneeded pain medications." I just can't place my finger on it.

Parents and medical decisions for their kids is a confusing area. There was the story of the young TCU fan with brain cancer whose parents "discontinued antibody treatment and chemotherapy [so he could] enjoy 'his remaining days with his family' before entering hospice soon." He died a couple of weeks ago and no one questions their decision.

Noted on The Ticket this morning: The Cowboys have two playoff wins in the last twenty years.

Fascinating: The DA in Waco is being sued by some of the Twin Peaks bikers because of the incompetent and reckless way he has thrown around indictments. Yesterday, a federal judge suggested that the DA needs to be replaced in the criminal cases. Why? The judge correctly believes that the DA has a financial interest in seeking a conviction against those suing him. If he gets one, he wins the civil case with the "See! I told ya!" defense. If he can't, the civil cases against him gets stronger.

My head almost exploded the other day when Fox 4's Clarice Tinsley, when reporting on a story of a cop trying to round up two cows, proudly noted, "You have to admit, that was a pretty good 'steak'-out." She was soooooo proud of herself.

When Fox News begins an attack on Hillary's "health issues", it is clearly desperation time. It's like calling a hook-n-ladder in the final minute of a football game. It's predictable, a sign of weakness, and never works. (Unless you're Boise State against Oklahoma in 2007.)

Someone chastised me for saying the law was "stupid" for making it a felony to steal a penny. He said that it wasn't broken but that it just needed to be tweaked. If a law needs to be tweaked it, as written, is a dumb law.

I've watched very little of the Olympics, but I was watching yesterday afternoon live when female cyclist Annemiek van Vleuten had the horrific crash that put her in intensive care. I thought she was dead.

If you close your eyes, every gymnast sounds like a munchkin.

Someone remarked how we are so busy taking pictures that we never really look and enjoy what we are taking a picture of and enjoy the moment. (Use the Grand Canyon as an example.) I thought of this when I saw a clip of Denzel Washington walking past some Cowboy fans at training camp. One lady turned her back towards him so she could take a selfie with Washington in the background.

I actually heard a guy announce he was Colts fan and that he expected the Hall of Fame Game to be a "good game". Buddy, there has never been, nor will there ever be. a pre-season game that is a "good game."

Last night Fox 4 News teased that a retired Fort Worth Zoo employee died "surrounded" by 70 snakes in his home and "we will tell you how he died . . . next." They clarified by pointing out he died from natural causes and all the snakes were in crates.

The Star-Telegram had a story on a young meth addict. I think I spotted one of the problems to her recovery plan . . .

I saw the movie Concussion over thew weekend. It was good but not great. There's something about feature films that aren't true documentaries that cause me to question too many aspects of them. We Are Marshall comes to mind.

Anyone seen Walter White of Breaking Bad lately? . . .

(Actual photo from the scene)

"Five family members, including a 2-year-old girl, were found dead in their home in Pennsylvania in what authorities are describing as an apparent murder-suicide." The family was featured in a July 2015 story in the New York Times.

Remember when an Evel Knievel jump would make news? Nowadays his son can jump 18 Corvettes at a Clay Cooley dealership and no one even notices. (That link takes you to a KXAS video of the jump but the brain trust over there thinks it is a good idea to put a 30 second commercial in front of 24 second clip.)

A-Rod announced his retirement from the Yankees yesterday. The Rangers, who he hasn't played for since 2004, still owe him $40 million?